The US State Department asserted Thursday that progress was made in negotiations between Israel and Lebanon in Rome, despite a significant flare-up in violence a day earlier.

“The two sides are a lot closer on what needs to be done to advance and expand the pilot zone process,” a State Department spokesperson said Thursday, after Jerusalem and Beirut wrapped up their seventh round of direct talks.

The negotiations picked up amid the heaviest cross-border fighting in weeks, with the IDF striking Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon after two IDF soldiers were killed by an explosive on Wednesday.

But a Lebanese presidential source told AFP on Thursday that Israel had refused in talks to withdraw from more areas of south Lebanon unless the Lebanese army had full control of an initial two “pilot zones.”

The Lebanese source told AFP, on condition of anonymity, that the talks had “not yielded definitive results regarding the pilot zones.”

“Lebanon is keen to move on to new areas, whereas the Israeli side insists on verifying [the implementation in] the first two zones before proceeding to the next stage,” the source added.

The Lebanese Al Akhbar outlet reported Thursday that the US is taking Israel’s side on the pace of the Lebanese army’s disarming of Hezbollah.

American mediators told their Lebanese counterparts on Wednesday that they do not intend to pressure Israel to accelerate the IDF’s withdrawal, according to the report, and that the Lebanese Armed Forces must take clear steps in disarming Hezbollah across Lebanon so that the pilot zones can be accelerated and expanded.

A diplomat familiar with the negotiations who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly said earlier this week that Lebanon had asked for the next pilot zone to be either in the town of Khiam or Bint Jbeil. Both areas saw heavy fighting in the latest Israel-Hezbollah war and are currently occupied by Israeli forces.

According to the Saudi Asharq News network, the meeting in Rome had three parallel tracks: legal, political and military.

The political track reportedly addressed the proposed pilot zones, while the military track aimed to........

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